The Diamond As Big As The Ritz

Chapter V

After breakfast, John found his way out the great marble entrance, and
looked curiously at the scene before him. The whole valley, from the
diamond mountain to the steep granite cliff five miles away, still
gave off a breath of golden haze which hovered idly above the fine
sweep of lawns and lakes and gardens. Here and there clusters of elms
made delicate groves of shade, contrasting strangely with the tough
masses of pine forest that held the hills in a grip of dark-blue
green. Even as John looked he saw three fawns in single file patter
out from one clump about a half-mile away and disappear with awkward
gaiety into the black-ribbed half-light of another. John would not
have been surprised to see a goat-foot piping his way among the trees
or to catch a glimpse of pink nymph-skin and flying yellow hair
between the greenest of the green leaves.

In some such cool hope he descended the marble steps, disturbing
faintly the sleep of two silky Russian wolfhounds at the bottom, and
set off along a walk of white and blue brick that seemed to lead in no
particular direction.

He was enjoying himself as much as he was able. It is youth's felicity
as well as its insufficiency that it can never live in the present,
but must always be measuring up the day against its own radiantly
imagined future--flowers and gold, girls and stars, they are only
prefigurations and prophecies of that incomparable, unattainable young
dream.

John rounded a soft corner where the massed rosebushes filled the air
with heavy scent, and struck off across a park toward a patch of moss
under some trees. He had never lain upon moss, and he wanted to see
whether it was really soft enough to justify the use of its name as an
adjective. Then he saw a girl coming toward him over the grass. She
was the most beautiful person he had ever seen.

She was dressed in a white little gown that came just below her knees,
and a wreath of mignonettes clasped with blue slices of sapphire bound
up her hair. Her pink bare feet scattered the dew before them as she
came. She was younger than John--not more than sixteen.

"Hallo," she cried softly, "I'm Kismine."

She was much more than that to John already. He advanced toward her,
scarcely moving as he drew near lest he should tread on her bare toes.

"You haven't met me," said her soft voice. Her blue eyes added, "Oh,
but you've missed a great deal!"... "You met my sister, Jasmine, last
night. I was sick with lettuce poisoning," went on her soft voice, and
her eye continued, "and when I'm sick I'm sweet--and when I'm well."

"You have made an enormous impression on me," said John's eyes, "and
I'm not so slow myself"--"How do you do?" said his voice. "I hope
you're better this morning."--"You darling," added his eyes
tremulously.

John observed that they had been walking along the path. On her
suggestion they sat down together upon the moss, the softness of which
he failed to determine.

He was critical about women. A single defect--a thick ankle, a hoarse
voice, a glass eye--was enough to make him utterly indifferent. And
here for the first time in his life he was beside a girl who seemed to
him the incarnation of physical perfection.

"Are you from the East?" asked Kismine with charming interest.
"No," answered John simply. "I'm from Hades."

Either she had never heard of Hades, or she could think of no pleasant
comment to make upon it, for she did not discuss it further.

"I'm going East to school this fall" she said. "D'you think I'll like
it? I'm going to New York to Miss Bulge's. It's very strict, but you
see over the weekends I'm going to live at home with the family in our
New York house, because father heard that the girls had to go walking
two by two."

"Your father wants you to be proud," observed John.

"We are," she answered, her eyes shining with dignity. "None of us has
ever been punished. Father said we never should be. Once when my
sister Jasmine was a little girl she pushed him downstairs and he just
got up and limped away.

"Mother was--well, a little startled," continued Kismine, "when she
heard that you were from--from where you are from, you know.
She said that when she was a young girl--but then, you see, she's a
Spaniard and old-fashioned."

"Do you spend much time out here?" asked John, to conceal the fact
that he was somewhat hurt by this remark. It seemed an unkind allusion
to his provincialism.

"Percy and Jasmine and I are here every summer, but next summer
Jasmine is going to Newport. She's coming out in London a year from
this fall. She'll be presented at court."

"Do you know," began John hesitantly, "you're much more sophisticated
than I thought you were when I first saw you?"

"Oh, no, I'm not," she exclaimed hurriedly. "Oh, I wouldn't think of
being. I think that sophisticated young people are terribly
common, don't you? I'm not all, really. If you say I am, I'm going to
cry."

She was so distressed that her lip was trembling. John was impelled to
protest:

"I didn't mean that; I only said it to tease you."

"Because I wouldn't mind if I were," she persisted, "but I'm
not. I'm very innocent and girlish. I never smoke, or drink, or read
anything except poetry. I know scarcely any mathematics or chemistry.
I dress very simply--in fact, I scarcely dress at all. I think
sophisticated is the last thing you can say about me. I believe that
girls ought to enjoy their youths in a wholesome way."

"I do, too," said John, heartily,

Kismine was cheerful again. She smiled at him, and a still-born tear
dripped from the comer of one blue eye.

"I like you," she whispered intimately. "Are you going to spend all
your time with Percy while you're here, or will you be nice to me?
Just think--I'm absolutely fresh ground. I've never had a boy in love
with me in all my life. I've never been allowed even to see
boys alone--except Percy. I came all the way out here into this grove
hoping to run into you, where the family wouldn't be around."

Deeply flattered, John bowed from the hips as he had been taught at
dancing school in Hades.

"We'd better go now," said Kismine sweetly. "I have to be with mother
at eleven. You haven't asked me to kiss you once. I thought boys
always did that nowadays"

John drew himself up proudly.

"Some of them do," he answered, "but not me. Girls don't do that sort
of thing--in Hades."